3rd of Epiphany: Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

1 Corinthians 1: 10 – 18

10 I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought. 11 My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. 12 What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ.”

13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptized in the name of Paul? 14 I thank God that I did not baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so no one can say that you were baptized in my name. 16 (Yes, I also baptized the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptized anyone else.) 17 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 1

Matthew 4

18 As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. 19 ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will send you out to fish for people.’ 20 At once they left their nets and followed him.

21 Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, 22 and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

23 Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and illness among the people.

One would have thought the main difference between worshipping outdoors, and worshipping in a church, would be four walls and a roof, but no, that's not the case – and I have Ruskin to thank for putting me right on this matter.

After Christmas I was considering thinning out my books, when I came across the 'Selected Writing of John Ruskin.'

I took it down from the shelf, opened it at random, and began to read,

“Men say their pinnacles point to heaven. Why, so does every tree that buds, and every bird that rises as it sings. Men say their aisles are good for worship. Why, so is every mountain glen and rough seashore. But this they have of distinct and indisputable glory,—that their mighty walls were never raised, and never shall be, but by men who love and aid each other in their weakness.—that all their interlacing strength of vaulted stone has its foundation upon the stronger arches of manly fellowship, and all their changing grace of depressed or lifted pinnacle owes its cadence and completeness to sweeter symmetries of human soul.”

That was something I had never considered before; I knew one might worship God in any inspirational place formed by nature, but I had not recognised that because church buildings are formed by people working together they become an excellent symbol of the collective life of the Church – and that is a unique context for worship.

It is because a church building is a collaborative work that the building uniquely speaks of 'interlaced strength' and 'fellowship.'

A church building stands as a metaphor for the ongoing life of the congregation.

The communal means of construction pre-echoes the communal purpose of the building.

'Trees that bud', and 'birds that sing', and every “mountain glen and rough seashore” may 'point to heaven' and be good places for worship, but they have not been built by human hands. An ancient church building bears witness to those who built it, and to those who have maintained it, and added to it down the centuries. It speaks of their characters, and collective endeavour, or as Ruskin writes, of the “sweeter symmetries of human soul.”

That resonated with me: when I walk into the stillness and quiet of an ancient church I can sense the people who have inhabited the place before. I'm not talking about ghosts, I mean the traces, the imprints, left in the fabric of the building, that tell fragments of stories - fragments that together form a kaleidoscopic vision into the past.

The story the building tells is made up of many voices, speaking all at once in broken sentences, so it is hard to discern singular meanings, it is like the indistinct rattling of a distant crowd.

However, sometimes, in the crowd there are more distinct voices, such as the plaque commemorating the faithful service of a Church Warden, or the memorial lamenting a son killed in service of Empire, or a window dedicated to a deceased loved one that tells of grief searching for consolation in stained glass.

Then there is the architecture of the building, the medieval arches of a Christianity at once more mysterious and more literal than ours.

The Victorian gothic revival additions that sing of the joy of rediscovering and reinventing that old form of religion.

The kitchenette that speaks of wrestling a recalcitrant medieval building into providing the basics of modern hospitality. I know what that costs, I have worked with fifteen church councils, I have seen the cost in terms of time, and energy, and determination, and fund raising, and wrangling with heritage bodies, and with the Diocese; when I see a repaired church roof, or a new lectern, or even just a tidy church, I know the hours of dedication that have gone into making that happen.

The angels may hymn with us above, but they do not push round the hoover.

Ruskin's words also interested me because it gives me another answer to those characters who say, 'I don't need to go to church to worship God.'

You do need to go to church to be a part of the Church, and there you can worship in a place that symbolises by it's very existence the collaborative nature of the Church.

I did smile at the following phrase in Ruskin's paragraph,

“...that their mighty walls were never raised, and never shall be, but by men who love and aid each other in their weakness.”

Did the people who built our churches love and aid each other?

Are church buildings really such a story of human harmony?

Did the varied tradesmen, apprentices, and journeymen, all link arm in arm as they skipped to work, singing chansons and madrigals?

Had Ruskin, that dusty academic polymath, perhaps never been to a building site?

So I screwed up my eyes and looked carefully at Ruskin's words.

I think he means that nothing is ever built without cooperation, and that is self evident – if there had been no working together, there would be no building.

Even if the masons detested the blacksmiths, and the carpenters loathed the plasterers, a completed church building still represents the best of us because it means we have worked together, despite our differences. That point where we bend our wills to touch, that point where we manage to overcome our desire to do things our own way, is like the, “interlacing strength of vaulted stone.”

That's a powerful image, stone vaulting as a symbol of human connectedness, and strength in unity. An arch works by turning downwards force into compression, the curved shape pushes the weight outward and downward, so the stones press together instead of pulling apart.

In a Gothic pointed arch the shape at the top directs even more of the forces straight down, so even less force is trying to separate apart the structure. As a result the gothic arch can be taller, thinner, and span wider openings. It's all about the managing the stress by standing together in the right formation.

The Gothic arch is an image in stone of what Ruskin calls, “ the stronger arches of manly fellowship.” Although, I think it works for women too.

So what has this to do with a Sunday in Epiphany?

Well, opening the 'Selected Writings of John Ruskin' brought me a minor epiphany, but I think more than that, our first reading was an appeal by Paul to the church in Corinth to live in unity, “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.”

We know that, and we know it can be difficult, but perhaps Ruskin is a help here when he says that those places where we touch, where we manage to reach out and find common cause, those are the points that count, that redistribute the force that would otherwise bring the building crashing to the ground. The living stones of the church can learn from the cold stones of the church building.

In our second reading we heard Jesus calling the disciples, James and John, whom Jesus called 'the sons of thunder' because of their confrontational and forceful natures, yet they became foundation stones of the Church.

May we, like them, continue to be built together into a dwelling place in which God lives by his Spirit.

Amen.